I am a MA/MBA candidate at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School of Business. I focus on Russian politics, economics, and demography but also write more generally about Eastern Europe. Please note that all opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone and that I do not speak in an official capacity for Lauder, Wharton, Forbes, or any other organization.
I do my best to inject hard numbers (and flashy Excel charts) into conversations and debates that are too frequently driven by anecdotes. In addition to Forbes I've written for True/Slant, INOSMI, Salon, the National Interest, The Moscow Times, Russia Magazine, the Washington Post, and Quartz.
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Are There Really '13 Abortions For Every 10 Live Births' In Russia?

Jonathan Last, a long-time writer for The Weekly Standard, has recently penned a new book What To Expect When No One’s Expecting. Since I’m interested in demographics I’m definitely going to read the book, popular books that deal with demographics are depressingly irregular, but for Last’s sake I hope he’s a bit more careful with his use of American demographic statistics than he is with Russian.

Abortion is rampant, with 13 abortions performed for every 10 live births. Consider that for a moment: Russians are so despondent about the future that they have 30 percent more abortions than births. This might be the most grisly statistic the world has ever seen. It suggests a society that no longer has the will to live.”

I’m not going to work myself up into a self-righteous lather, I will just calmly and politely note that Last is not accurate is his description of Russia’s abortion rate. Here is graph showing the number of abortions in Russia as a percentage of the number of live births:

So, in 2012 there were about 42 abortions per 100 live births, not 130. The last time the number of abortions exceeded the number of births by 30% or more was in 2002. Additionally, rather than representing “the most grisly statistic the world has ever seen,” an abortion rate 30% larger than the birth rate was actually a huge improvement from rates that prevailed in the early 1990′s.

Now Russians still have an awful a lot of abortions. Considering the physical and emotional trauma inherent with getting an abortion, one would hope that the number of abortions in Russia continues its rapid plunge, and that Russians continue to switch to other more modern and less damaging forms of contraception. But if you treat the abortion rate as proxy for “the national will to live” (which I personally think is a huge mistake) Russians are not growing ever more despondent but ever more hopeful.

As you can see, there has been a dramatic and sustained reduction in Russia’s abortion rate during a period of time that the country’s political system has, even in the most optimistic reading, been regressing. And this is why, even though I think demographics matters, I’m so wary of making it the only thing that matters. It would be great if the world rewarded countries that provide civil rights, accountable government, and economic opportunity to their citizens with more robust demographic indicators. It would also be great if autocratic governments were punished with plunging birth rates and skyrocketing mortality. But the world doesn’t work that way.

Indeed the truly scary thing is that every single Eastern European country, even the ones that have fully integrated into the EU and NATO, was more demographically stable under communism. I don’t know how Last deals with that somewhat shocking and unpleasant fact, like I said I haven’t read the book yet, but when it comes to Russia and abortion his numbers are badly outdated and his analysis doesn’t incorporate the substantial improvements of recent years.

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Mark, you really are entitled to some kind award for hutzpah in the blogosphere. You criticize this writer for using inaccurate statistics, but you blindly and credulously rely on Kremlin statistics which are themselves deeply suspect and self-serving. As the New York Times reported in 2011: “Official statistics placed the number of abortions at 1.3 million in 2009, a significant drop from the 1990s. Russia’s increasingly vocal anti-abortion activists, some in Parliament, say it is perhaps many times higher, and Mr. Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana Medvedeva, has taken up the cause.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/world/europe/15iht-russia15.html

So all I can say is that this is one of the greatest instances of the pot calling the kettle black in the history of bloggery. The very notion that facts generated by a regime headed by a proud KGB spy who is president for life can simply be taken at face value is simply an insult to the intelligence of your readers. You are at least as one-sided as the fellow you are criticizing, to say the least.

Meanwhile you choose to ignore stories piling up by the day on gross violations of human rights being imposed by the dictatorial Kremlin, almost as if you were a neo-Soviet propagandist trying to take the world’s eye off the Russian ball.

Dear LaRussophobe, the Tonkin incident never happened, neither did Iraq had WMD. We also know that from the CIA generated data it follows that Russia has the highest percentage of men of all countries. Thus, Western stats and media has been proven to be untrustworthy and spread lies, not just suspected to be one, as they do about Rosstat. Also, US is NOW conducting genocidal wars, killing and causing deaths of millions in the Middle East. To criticize Russia and not talk about US crimes which are happening today, puts one out of society of humans. Somebody who criticizes Russia and says nothing about US and its Baltic and other European collaborators is trash, especially if that person is from these countries or, worse, from US. The Russia’s detractors from US are trash because they live in a criminal country but choose to pontificate about others as if they had a moral right.

There’s a few problems with your link: (a) it doesn’t contain any data about Russia and (b) you don’t suggest that WHO data is based on anything except Kremlin reports, even if it did. What you should be doing is citing some published report by somebody other than you who agrees with your claims, and who relies on a source of data that is not the Kremlin itself. To be credible, that person would have to have done the actual research that you yourself seem to fear.

Which is your problem Mark. You don’t do research. You have preconceived ideas about what is true in Russia based on data generated by a man who spent his entire life learning how to lie and deceive and who would say and do anything to hold onto power. You don’t challenge or even think about his “data,” you just repeat it. And the reason for this is simple: It’s part of your idea of yourself. It’s your “role” as you see it to prove how smart you are by poking holes in statements made about Russia by her critics (never her proponents, or almost never, of course), critics with whom you disagree on a deeply partisan and ideological basis. You hate National Review and Weekly Standard in a deeply personal way. This makes you every bit as biased as anyone you seek to criticize.

Therefore, you ignore the New York Times story I directed you to, not just in your essay but in your response to my comment. You also ignore many, many similar reports, even on pro-Kremlin sources, like this one:

http://rt.com/news/russia-embryos-abortions-955/

In other words, you simply don’t know what you’re talking about, and you don’t seem to care. Similarly, you make no mention of the fact that Last’s book has nothing whatsoever to do with Russia, it’s about a demographic crisis in the USA.

“To criticize Russia and not talk about US crimes which are happening today, puts one out of society of humans.” Aren’t you plagiarizing Stalin? Credit where credit is due! What would Mr. Medvedev think?!

On a side note, Mark,, I realize you probably have nothing to do with this but the mechanics of this blog which display only comments made or designated by you unless a reader knows to click a special button to reveal the others are a true outrage. If you have any control over this feature, you should extinguish it. If not, you should contact Forbes and ask them to reconsider it. It’s virtually unheard of in the blogsphere and in insult and indignity to Forbes readers.

Take the number of abortions performed between 1991 – 2012. Then take the number births between same years. Do the math. What do you get? The abortion rate is about 30% larger than the birth rate.

Why is that relevant? Because abortions done before 2012 are definitely not irrelevant today. Given the sad conditions of Russian medical practice and invasive abortion techniques abortion-related genital tract infections and infertility have been and still are way too common. Apocalyptic number of abortions done in the last two decades have left a terrible legacy that lasts long into the future.

Sorry but that was quite a hurr on your behalf there, Mark. You acknowledge that under communism ex-Soviet countries were demographically positive (I strongly advise you to dig up Baltic states data, people are literally leaving and dying out there and last census in Latvia took more time than Russian one to process since they had to fraud it to make a country of 1.7mln look barely above 2mln. to keep access to EU programs) but you still subconsciously jump to the same old “USSR was a barbaric pit” stereotype every so often.

It’s not the absence of contraception that caused this peak. It’s the most scary and hopeless period in modern Russian history, commonly know on your continent as “liberation”. If Russians ever lost will to live, it was in 1991-1992, because one simply doesn’t give birth to kids when the country you live in suddenly turns into one great Detroit and every social mechanism – which was working! – grinds to a halt.

Also I fail to understand why the statement regarding Communism mentioned above is shocking and unpleasant. Last time I checked Liberal Democracy wasn’t the Only and Sacred Religious Order, or is it already?